Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Today, Tuesday, November 29, 2011 is the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. This day commemorates the racist and colonialist proposal of the United Nations to partition Palestine in 1947. All over the world, people stood in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle today. In Beit Hanoun, today, like every Tuesday for the last three years, the popular struggle raised its voice against the occupation. Against the no go zone which surrounds Gaza, which makes the refugees of 1948 and 1967 who live in Beit Hanoun refugees once again, the no go zone which throws them off their land and destroys their houses and orchards. Against the siege on Gaza which is designed to destroy them, their hopes, their dreams, their economy, their future. Under the unceasing gaze of observation balloons and drones, in the shadow of a giant concrete wall studded with gun towers which seem to come out of a futuristic horror film but which is in fact is the present and is no movie, it is Gaza. Against the occupation which can only remind the world of George Orwell’s prediction of what the future would look like, “a boot stamping on a human face, forever”.
We gathered in the shadows of the ruins of the Beit Hanoun Agricultural College, not 100 meters away from the graves of the Beit Hanoun Massacre of 2006. The Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, the International Solidarity Movement, and Palestinians from around Gaza gathered to march into the no go zone. We were buoyed by the knowledge that around the world today people were raising their voices in support of Palestine, in support of peace, justice and freedom. The megaphone crackled to life, “We Will Not Go Down” by Michael Heart. In a sea of flags from around the world, Palestine, Ireland, Italy, India, Malaysia and many others, we began our march towards the no go zone.
We enter the no go zone and begin to release balloons with Palestinian flags attached to them. The balloons will float over the walls that surround Gaza, they will take our message farther than our megaphone and our voices can. Perhaps they will be caught in the branches of an orange tree planted by the fathers or grandfathers of the men gathered here, on the land that they were expelled from. There is no risk that they will be caught in the branches of orange trees before they cross the wall, all of those trees have been bulldozed by Israel when it created the no go zone, the zone of death which surrounds Gaza. In the short story “Men in the Sun” by Ghassan Kanafini some Palestinian laborers die in a water tank while waiting to cross a border. The driver of the truck is left lamenting, “Why didn’t they say anything” as they died. We are not silent, even if are voices are lost in the space of the dead zone which Israel created around Gaza, these balloons will carry our message to the outside. Let no one say that they did not know, that we did not say anything while Gaza is strangled to death.
Sabur Zaaneen from the Local Initiative spoke to the crowd. He called upon the people of the world “to isolate Israel internationally and to exert pressure in all its forms until the end of the occupation of Palestine.” Radhika Sainath from the International Solidarity Movement also spoke, “Today the entire free world is against the settlements, the wall and the Israeli occupation. We will continue our work in Palestine with Palestinian activistsuntil we succeed in bringing freedom and justice to Palestine.” Their voices were echoed by the chanting of the crowd, against the occupation, voiced demanding peace, justice and freedom, voicing pledgingsteadfastness in the struggle to the end the occupation.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Layla and her daughters with the turkey in Faraheen (Photo: Radhika Sainath, Notes from Behind the Blockade) - Click here for more images

It all started with a simple question from Jabar, a Palestinian farmer from Faraheen, during Eid al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice.
“Is there an American eid (holiday) where you slaughter an animal?” he asked Nathan, a colleague here in Gaza, a few weeks ago.
Thanksgiving and turkeys came to mind.
And so, I found myself celebrating “Thanksgiving,” Gazan-style, this afternoon in the small, southern Gazan village.
Nathan painstakingly put together a variety of ingredients over the past couple of weeks to make a proper meal: turkey, baked beans, sweet potatoes, biscuits and chocolate chip cookies! We had to nix the stuffing, gravy was too difficult, and pie, out of the question.
After six weeks of falafel (delicious as it is), I was really looking forward to Nathan’s Midwestern cuisine. But would it all come together given Gaza’s regular power outages, Israel’s recent shooting at farmers in the area and the lack of key ingredients due to the siege?
We rose early to accompany farmers in Faraheen to their land within Israel’s 300 meter ”buffer zone” – or “kill zone” – as Palestinians here frequently call it.
The week had not been a good one, and I was concerned that our belated Thanksgiving would turn into Black Friday.
On Wednesday, the Israeli army had shot live ammunition in the air when our group went with farmers to the buffer zone in nearby Khuza’a.
The day before, the Israeli army had called the Palestinian Office of Coordination and told them that they “wanted to shoot” us and twenty Palestinians while we were in northern Gaza nonviolently protesting the Israeli occupation, the buffer zone, and 63 years of dispossession in the buffer zone. The Palestinian Authority frantically looked for the phone number of Saber Zanin, the organizer of the weekly Beit Hanoun protests and told him, “We are trying to ask the Israelis not to shoot you. They wanted to shoot you and kill you.”
And yesterday, 3 nautical miles of the coast of Gaza, an Israeli naval warship chased our small humanitarian boat, the Oliva, along with several Palestinian fishing boats, towards the shore for no apparent reason.
Today just couldn’t be good. Would our Gazan Thanksgiving look more like the original Thanksgiving — a symbol of land seizure, dispossession and ethnic cleansing — than the delicious turkey-filled version I was hoping for?
I rose early, gulped down a cup of sugary tea and dry floury date cookies that Jabar’s wife Layla made before heading out to the buffer zone. The sky cleared and I heard Israeli drones overhead.
On the way to the buffer zone, we met 26-year-old Yusef Abu Rjeela, the farmer who want was hoping to sow wheat on his land. We asked him what he wanted to do if the Israelis started shooting.
“Stay on the land,” he said. If the Israelis shot in the air, he didn’t want to run. And if they shot at us, well…
We continued onward, and my cell phone rang. It was Nathan. “I put the beans in the pressure cooker for 30 minutes and they’ve become bean soup!” he exclaimed. “Layla says I shouldn’t have soaked them and used the pressure cooker.”
“Stay calm,” I said. “Do you have more beans?” He did. We continued on our way.
Five of us foreigners donned our yellow vests, and accompanied Yusef and another farmer as one sowed wheat and the other plowed the land. The drones went away.
All seemed quiet on the eastern front.
An Israeli military tower stood in the distance. A white balloon equipped with an aerial surveillance camera flew overhead. The former farmland was dry and brown from years of Israeli bulldozing and tank traffic.
After a while, we made bets on when the Israelis would start shooting. It was 11:25 a.m., and I put in for 11:45 a.m., another person for 11:50 a.m. Hussein, a Palestinian university student who came with us, didn’t think the Israelis would shoot at all.
At noon, the farmers had finished and we all started to walk back to the village. Yusef explained to us the lawsuit his family had filed against the state of Israel for murdering his younger brother the day after Operation Cast Lead ended in January 2009. His father, who had witnessed the murder, had gone to Israel to testify.
As we left the buffer zone, I congratulated Hussein on being right about the shooting. Then we heard it — Israeli army gunfire in the distance. The time: 12:05.
We promptly head back to Jabar’s house in the village. There, Nathan was immersed in a whirlwind of preparation.
“Get the baking soda out of the bag!” he directed.
“You mean baking powder?” I asked him, looking the plastic bag he had brought from Gaza City.
“No, soda.” There was no baking soda. We were in for a biscuit disaster. Moreover, Layla and four of her five children were swirling around the kitchen, unsure of these strange American preparations.
Beans with sugar? In the oven? Nathan opened the ancient iron contraption, and held out a spoon for me. I stuck my tongue out and slurped up the brown deliciousness.
“Is it good?” asked Layla, suspiciously. “Is Nathan a good cook? Can you cook better?”
“Zacky ikthir,” I responded. Very tasty. “Not quite done,” I said to Nathan. “I can cook, but maybe Nathan is better than me,” I added to Layla. She didn’t seem convinced.
Nathan shooed everyone away, but we stayed in the kitchen, it was the warmest room in their small, cement block, metal sheet-roofed house. And, I was clearly the only one cut out for the role of taster. Layla turned to more important questions.
“You’re a lawyer, can you sue Israel for me?” she asked. “All our problems come from Israel. When I was 14, they shot me in the hip. Then they bulldozed our olive trees and took our land. What can we do?” I hadn’t realized that Layla’s limp stemmed from about 1980, when the Israeli army entered her school and shot her as she tried to help a wounded friend.
She turned away to take the turkey out of the pot. The oven wasn’t big enough for a whole bird, which was only sold in pre-cut pieces. All in all, it was a delicious lunch, and no one got shot. And that, is something to be thankful for.

At approximately 01:00 on Thursday 24 November 2011, about 15 Israeli tanks accompanied by armored bulldozers moved about 300 metres into Burat Abu Samra area north of Beit Lahiya, in North Gaza district with sporadic gun fire.Bulldozers leveled lands that had been razed before. The IOF were still in the area as this news was being published at 13:00 on Thursday, 24 November 2011. No casualties or injuries were reported, but the gunfire scared farmers and they abandoned their farms.

At approximately 9:00 on Wednesday, 23 November 2011, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) opened fire at Palestinian bird hunters inNetzarim, the evacuated settlement northwest of Erez crossing. The victims were hunting birds approximately 300 metres away from the northern border fence when the IOF opened fire at them. No casualties or injuries were reported but the incident scared the hunters and they left their work activities immediately.

At approximately 09:20 on Wednesday, 23 November 2011, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), stationed at a military watchtower near the Karm Abu Salim (Kerem Shalom) crossing east of Ash-Shoka village, opened fire at Palestinian houses and agricultural fields close to the nearby Gaza International Airport.

At approximately 21:20 on Tuesday, 22 November 2011, the IOF also opened fire in the same area. No casualties or injuries were reported.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

I awoke today with the news that the NYPD was clearing out Occupy Wall Street and that Israeli tanks were shelling “northern Gaza.” In the West Bank, Palestinian Freedom Riders, inspired by the US freedom riders of the 1960s, were getting ready to board segregated buses to occupied East Jerusalem.
Here in Gaza, we head to Beit Hanoun for their weekly nonviolent protest in the buffer zone. For three years, Palestinians in the north have been marching into the barren, no-man’s land which encircles the inside of the narrow strip like a slowly-tightening noose.
We arrived around 11 a.m. and gathered in front of a bombed-out house down a dusty road leading to the border. This was my second buffer zone protest. At my first, two weeks ago, the Israeli army had fired a few shots from the military towers at the border. I wondered what would happen today. As a foreigner, I was to don a reflective fluorescent yellow vest and walk in front of the Palestinians, which seemed to provide them a degree of solace. They seem to think that the Israelis were less likely to use lethal violence when Americans, Italians, and Brits walked with them.
I was not so sure.
About two dozen people waving Palestinian flags marched down the dusty path towards the buffer zone. The landscape reminded me of home, of California, with its thorny tumbleweeds and cactus. It was hard to believe that only ten years ago fruit orchards and olive trees filled this area. But Israel had bulldozed it all, claiming it needed 300 kilometers of Gaza’s most fertile land, but in reality taking more.
Onwards we walked, the Palestinians singing songs and holding a giant Palestinian flag. I wondered what was in store for us today as Israel’s concrete wall and military towers became visible. Would they shoot in the air first? Or would they shoot at us? If they shot us, would they shoot someone standing in the middle first (as I was) or someone standing off to the side? Would they shoot us in the legs? And how good was their aim?
We past a small farm and the family waved at us. They were very brave to have stayed, I thought. Another farm had stuck a large white flag in the dirt in front of their house, as I had seen other families near the buffer zone do. Other farm houses had clearly been abandoned.
We were getting close to the buffer zone now, and the journalists that had come along moved from the front to the back. They didn’t want to get shot either. I started to imagine what it felt like to get shot. Excruciatingly painful, I decided.
At that point, I recalled that I had never made a will. If I died intestate, what law would apply? I had just moved from California to New York, but was I officially a resident of New York? And how would Gaza factor into it all? Was Gaza like the West Bank, where Israel applied a strange patchwork of Ottoman, Jordanian and Israeli military law as it pleased? Not that I really had much to bequeath.
We continued on, and I could see the Palestinian flag we had planted in the earth two weeks before. It was a windy day, and the flag billowed beautifully. The Israeli army had not shot it down. About 50 meters behind it loomed the wall and the military towers.
“Our flag is still there!” I exclaimed to Nathan, an American volunteer walking next to me. The Israelis had used the last Palestinian flag as target practice.
“Do you want to sing the star-spangled banner?” he joked. I smiled, I hadn’t intended to make the reference. Yasser Arafat had symbolically declared Palestinian Independence 23 years ago today, on November 15, 1988.
We stopped, well before the flag, at a large cement block painted red, black and green. Sabur Zaaneen from the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, the leader of the march, had thought the area to be more dangerous in recent days.
He gave a brief speech on Palestinian independence and the countries that were standing in the way of Palestinian freedom. As he spoke, I stared at the Israeli towers and the wall, the Israeli flags on top and of the land beyond it on the other side. I wondered if at that moment, Palestinians were attempting to board Jewish-only buses in the West Bank, facing violence from Israeli settlers not unlike the KKK in the Jim Crow south.
The speech ended and the Israelis had not shot at us. A few of the young men broke into a dabke dance, a Palestinian line dance of sorts, as one of them played the tabla and sung, and the women clapped in rhythm. I didn’t know the words but I clapped along as well.
We head back, and I had the star-spangled banner stuck in my head. “O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
One day, Palestine too would be free.

Twenty three years ago today the Palestinian declaration of independence was released. Written by Mahmoud Darwish, and unveiled to the world by Yasser Arafat in Algiers where he was living in exile like millions of other Palestinians. Today, in Beit Hanoun, we, the Local Committee of Beit Hanoun, the International Solidarity Movement, and local citizens of Beit Hanoun marched into the no go zone just as we have done every Tuesday for the last three years.
We gathered on the road beside the Agricultural College, raised Palestinian flags, and started to sing as we marched. We were about fifty strong. Men and women, Palestinians and Internationals, marched together to celebrate independence. As we crested the hill that lies on the border of the no go zone the person next to me commented how nice it was that the flag that we had placed in the no go zone was still there, the previous flag had been used by Israeli soldiers for target practice, we had found it laying in the dirt, it’s staff smashed by a bullet. Our flag was still there, the flag that has been flying in the face of Israeli bullets for sixty three years, through the Nakba, the Naqsa, the Occupation, the Intifada’s, the flag still flies.
We marched into the no go zone, this area of life transformed into a place of death. The scarred earth that so little is allowed to live in, ripped up every couple of months by IDF bulldozers. Beyond our flag is giant concrete fence lined with towers full of guns. Above us a giant white balloon to watch our every move. Demonstrations in Gaza are not met my soldiers with batons, or tear gas, or even rubber bullets, they are met with live fire, sometimes with tank shells.
We paused by a giant concrete block that we had painted with the Palestinian flag in an earlier demonstration. Sabur Zaaneen from the Local Initiative of Beit Hanoun climbed onto the block to speak. He vowed that the Palestinian people “continue the popular resistance and the struggle, until the end of the Occupation and the Palestinians gained their freedom and independence.” His message to the world was that “we invite you to work with us in the struggle for freedom in Palestine. Free people of the world must reject political blackmail and bribes from Israel and America as we recently saw in the United Nations.” His speech was followed by a release of balloons into the no go zone and debka dancing.
Palestine is still not free, the Occupation continues. Declarations of Independence are not reserved for peoples that are already free; they are statements of desire, of hope. The United States released its Declaration of Independence only one year into its war for independence, fighting would continue for another three years. Palestine released its declaration of Independence one year into the first Intifada. The struggle has continued for twenty three more years, it will continue until victory.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

The so-called “buffer zone” is a military no-go area that extends along the entire northern and eastern perimeter of the Gaza Strip's border with Israel, inside Palestinian territory, as well as at sea. The precise areas designated by Israel as “buffer zone” are unknown; changing Israeli policy is typically enforced with live fire.

Friday, November 4, 2011

GAZA, (PIC)-- Israeli occupation authorities opened water dams at Sanati to the east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip causing the flooding of Palestinian homes in the town of Abasan al-Kabira.The mayor of Abasan, Mustafa al-Shawwaf, told Safa news agency 8 homes in the town were flooded to a height of 70 to 90 cm, and that residents of those homes are being evacuated.Many streets in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, were also flooded as a result of torrential rain that fell all night in the area.Medical sources that nine homes were badly flooded in the Amal neighbourhood and that residents of those homes were rescued.PIC correspondent said that a medical centre near the Red Crescent headquarters in the city was also flooded.No casualties were reported until the preparation of this report, while the civil defence department said that its teams are helping in pumping the water out of the affected homes.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

3 Palestinian civilians, including a child, were wounded by IOF in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli war planes launched 17 air strikes against targets in the Gaza Strip.

A country house, a room and two containers were destroyed and a number of houses, shops and fields were damaged.

In the Gaza Strip, IOF conducted a limited incursion into the central Gaza Strip, during which they leveled areas of Palestinian land.

Thursday, 27 October 2011

At approximately 03:30, Israeli warplanes fired two missiles at a 50-square-meter agricultural house belonging to Saleem Jalal al-Farra, 41, in Wadi al-Salqa village to the east of the central Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah. The house was completely destroyed and 10 olive trees belonging to al-Farra and 5 nearby houses were damaged.

At approximately 14:30, Israeli soldiers stationed on an observation tower near Karm Abu Salem (Kerem) Shalom crossing at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel fired at Mustafa ‘Aayesh Ermailat, 33, who was grazing animals on the land of Gaza International Airport in the southeast of Rafah, nearly 800 meters from the border. He was wounded by a bullet to the left hand.

Saturday, 29 October 2011At approximately 21:45, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a number of activists of the al-Quds Brigades, south of Wadi al-Salqa, a village located east of the central Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah. The missile landed near a house, and wounded an activist. Additionally, 15-year-old Rawand Tayseer Abu Mughassib, was lightly wounded in the left hand while she was on her way to her grandmother’s house in the area, according to her father. Three houses were also damaged in the attack.

Sunday, 30 October 2011

Also at approximately 03:00, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a farm in al-Qaraman Street in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun. The missile made a crater, and damaged two nearby farms:

1. 60 olive and citrus trees were uprooted, and water pipelines and a part of the fence were destroyed in a farm belonging to Sofian Mousa Hamad; and

2. 45 olive and citrus trees, water pipelines and a part of the fence were destroyed in a farm belonging to ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Mustafa Hamad.

At approximately 10:00, Israeli aircraft hovering over the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis dropped warning flyers onto the town. The flyers warned Palestinian civilian not to get as close as to less than 300 meters from the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, otherwise they would be endangered, including being shot. A map was placed under the warning. On the back of flyers, there was a message warning civilians of those who launch rockets. It also included a phone number and an e-mail address asking civilian to provide information via them.

At approximately 11:15 on Tuesday, 01 November 2011, Israeli soldiers stationed on observation towers at Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing in the northern Gaza Strip opened fire at a number of Palestinian civilians and international solidarity activists who demonstrated near the crossing. According to Saber al-Za’anin, Coordinator of the Local Initiative in Beit Hanoun, stated that once the demonstrators got as close as to 70 meters from the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel and placed the Palestinian flag on a hill, Israeli soldiers opened fire at them. No casualties were reported.

Wednesday, 02 November 2011

At approximately 06:00, IOF moved nearly 150 meters into the east of Wadi al-Salqa village to the east of the central Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah. They leveled areas of Palestinian land. They redeployed outside the area two hours later and no casualties were reported.

At approximately 08:30, Israeli soldiers stationed on observation towers at Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing in the northern Gaza Strip opened fire at Palestinian workers who were collecting scraps of construction materials in the industrial zone, southwest of the crossing. The worker fled and no casualties were reported.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

The Israeli Air Force fired a missile into a Beit Hanoun residential neighborhood in north Gaza early Sunday morning. The missile landed in a grove surrounded by homes, creating a crater the size of a tennis court and destroying over forty orange and olive trees. Chunks of shrapnel and oranges lay scattered about the grove
Local children and area residents interviewed appeared to be in shock. Ayman Ismail Hamad explained that “[a]t 3 a.m. we heard a huge boom. It was so scary for the children and women here and they started to shout and cry – such a scary thing for them. When we looked out to see what happened we found everything there totally destroyed … and the windows from the houses in this area – totally nothing. The [Israeli] F-16 didn’t leave anything behind.”
The owner of the farmland, Sufyan Musa Muhammad, reported losing approximately 40 orange and olive trees, not including the uprooted trees at the periphery of the crater, valued at approximately $200 a tree. “It’s not just the price,” he added, gazing sadly at the upturned alien landscape. “It’s that there’s no more fruit.” According to Muhammad, no journalists had approached him regarding the Israeli missile attack, which went unreported.
Thirteen-year-old Amer Ayman Hamad, whose house is about 50 meters away from the impacted area said, “There was boom … I didn’t scream, I just woke up … it was during the night we didn’t hear any plane except for the sound of the drones … after that I went to the bathroom.”
Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack which terrorized local residents. No one was injured. Palestinians in the area believe that Israel used an F-16 to bomb the residential neighborhood due to the size of the crater and the thickness of the shrapnel.
When asked if he believed Israel should compensate him for his loss Muhammad replied, ”I don’t want money from the Israelis. Whatever they do to us we are steadfast and strong and we won’t leave our land.”

About this blog

This is a blog about Gaza farmers, workers and all the civilian population living in Gaza Strip rural communities along the Green Line, suffering from daily Israeli attacks and resisting the implementation of a so called "buffer zone" by the Israeli Occupation Forces.

Note: this blog is focusing on Israeli attacks on civilians inside or around the so called "buffer zone". Attacks on resistance fighters, or attacks, usually airstrikes on civilians further inside the Gaza Strip, or along the Egypt border (apart from the eastern areas such as Al Shoka or the airport area) are usually not mentioned. For the attacks of the Israeli Navy see http://fishingunderfire.blogspot.com/